Chapter 538: Chojuro
When Chojuro woke up from the severe pain, the first scene he saw was a blurry figure digging something out of his stomach.
Seeing him wake up, that dark figure even turned its head, parted its lips to reveal its teeth, and gave a grim smile.
He shuddered in terror, only then realizing he was bound to the bed, unable to move. Someone was calling his name, the voice coming from extremely far away, erratic, as if a devil from hell was summoning him.
"Chojuro!"
Chojuro jolted, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, and his muddled brain instantly cleared up.
He laboriously raised his head, blinked hard. The one speaking was not some devil, but Mei Terumi, who was looking at him with eyes full of pleasant surprise and concern. That gloomy and terrifying blurry figure was also not a bad person, but the Konoha ninja Haruno Sakura.
The pink-haired girl had her hair in a ponytail, wearing large-framed medical glasses, dressed as an intellectual doctor. Her emerald eyes turned to glance at him distantly.
"You're awake," she said plainly.
There was no pleasant surprise or fluctuation in her words, as if she were stating a most ordinary matter. "A bit faster than I expected."
I'm not dead, but receiving treatment...
Chojuro relaxed his neck muscles, fell back onto the pillow, and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Mei Terumi-sama, and Miss Haruno Sakura... what happened to me?"
He asked weakly.
"Call me doctor, thank you," Haruno Sakura's eyebrows twitched slightly, "Just performed a partial splenectomy on you..."
She shook the internal organ fragments in her hand, and even turned her head to glance at Mei Terumi. "Your previous handling of the internal injuries was too rough. That part of the internal organ was already necrotic, and I couldn't save it either, so I could only remove it. Internal organ damage is a typical Water Release injury; you should be very experienced with this."
Mei Terumi gave a bitter smile but had nothing to say.
Involving the sensitive decade-long turmoil, even as the Mizukage, she couldn't explain it clearly to an outsider.
Haruno Sakura threw the necrotic piece of flesh in her hand into the tray aside. As a Water Release expert, she naturally knew the power of Water Release very well. Except for her Water Gun Jutsu which caused cutting damage, ordinary Water Release relied on unparalleled impact to cause blunt trauma and internal injuries. That is to say, being hit by Water Release, there might be no obvious injuries on the surface, and the ninja could still stagger and hold on for a while, but in reality, the internal organs might have already hemorrhaged massively, and they would suddenly collapse before long.
Don't think that water is soft; under high speed and high pressure, a body of water can be harder than concrete! After being shaped and adjusted by Water Release, the damage caused by a large-scale Water Release rushing head-on is no less than a small mountain pressing down. What's even more terrifying is that this impact is continuous, lasting until the entire ninjutsu ends. The power of high-end Water Release can be imagined.
The girl frowned slightly and pondered for a moment.
From the injuries on Chojuro's body, Haruno Sakura could roughly estimate how much power Kisame's Water Release had left after he was made into a human puppet.
Let's put it this way, Kisame in his prime state, using Water Release with full force, could beat Chojuro down unable to get up in one encounter, his internal organs shattered, dying instantly; he absolutely wouldn't leave him with the spare energy to escape pursuit, flee back to the village, and hold on until now.
"I incidentally helped you treat the hidden injuries left from before. Rest well, recuperate well, and you will get better," she said softly.
Blue light shone on Haruno Sakura's hand, and she began to suture the incision on Chojuro's abdomen.
Chojuro forced a smile.
"I'm already a useless person!" The man patted his abdomen which was missing some parts, coughed twice, and said with a flushed face, "I won't be able to be a ninja anymore..."
Chojuro felt the wound on his abdomen. The exquisite medical skills of the Konoha ninja exceeded his expectations; the newly sutured wound actually left no scar. Chojuro was both surprised and helpless: "Mei Terumi-sama, there's no need to waste effort on a crippled person like me... Doctor Haruno's medical ninjutsu should be used on other valuable people."
Haruno Sakura raised her eyebrows.
"The others' injuries are not severe, your village's medical ninja can handle them." She glanced at Chojuro's action of rubbing his abdomen and added, "Looking for the scar? I incidentally removed it when healing just now..."
Medical ninjutsu was both convenient and simple for beautifying the skin and removing scars. She used it so much that she subconsciously used it on Chojuro as well, making the joke of drawing legs on a snake (T/N: doing something superfluous). She was stunned for a moment before remembering the maxim "Scars are a man's medals", so she scratched her cheek and laughed dryly: "I can help you add it back..."
The aesthetic standards between her previous life and this world didn't differ much regarding females, but were completely opposite regarding males. At least those fair, clean, and makeup-wearing effeminate pretty boys would absolutely not be popular in the ninja world. A heroic, sturdy man, preferably with a few scars on his body, was called handsome.
"Alright, let it be."
Mei Terumi shook her head and held Haruno Sakura's hand.
"Juro, don't say such silly things, we are no longer the Mist Hidden Village known as the Village of the Blood Mist." She sighed and said, "If we can casually abandon even our companions, throwing them aside like garbage when injured, then what did we risk our lives to overthrow Yagura's rule for back then?"
"I will absolutely not give up on you!"
Chojuro gripped the bedsheet tightly, his eye sockets slightly red, without saying a word.
"You don't need to be too desperate," Haruno Sakura nodded and smiled, "There might not be no turning point for the injury on your leg. In fact—"
Her words were only half spoken when she was interrupted by a boy who suddenly rushed into the ward.
"Brother, brother!" Choujuurou kicked the door open with a clang, shouting loudly as he rushed in, "I heard Konoha—"
Choujuurou's voice came to an abrupt halt after seeing Mei Terumi and Haruno Sakura in the ward.
He glanced at the girl's Konoha forehead protector, blushed shyly, and gave an awkward smile: "Ah... so the treatment is already finished."
Chojuro shrank his body, simply not having the face to look at his own brother's embarrassing performance.
"Choujuurou... you idiot!"
He secretly glanced at Haruno Sakura. The girl was exactly the same age as his brother, but the former's temperament was tranquil and elegant, while the latter was panicked and flustered, completely a difference of clouds and mud.
Following closely behind Choujuurou was an annoyed-looking medical ninja, who angrily twisted Choujuurou's ear: "Your brother just finished surgery, don't come make trouble and disturb his rest!" Saying that, he dragged Choujuurou out.
Mei Terumi and Haruno Sakura looked at each other and smiled.
This little episode interrupted Haruno Sakura's explanation, so she simply didn't say anything more. After all, Sakura couldn't guarantee that this matter would definitely succeed.
Sometimes, giving someone hope and then letting them rejoice for nothing is worse than never giving hope in the first place.
After his younger brother Choujuurou was pulled away, Chojuro soon entered a state of low spirits. Seeing this, Haruno Sakura and Mei Terumi didn't stay long. After asking a few questions about his encounter with Sasori that day, they quietly left.
Returning to the Mizukage Building, Haruno Sakura reviewed the intelligence brought back by other Mist Ninja squads again. Unfortunately, Chojuro was the only one who had a frontal encounter with Akatsuki and successfully escaped, and that was the only piece of the most valuable intelligence. The rest were either seriously distorted, fragmented, contradictory, or even just chasing shadows.
After working for half a day, Haruno Sakura still gained nothing.
She simply stopped wasting time, said goodbye to Mei Terumi, left the Mizukage Building, and returned to the temporary residence—that is, the small courtyard where Team Haruno Sakura stayed during their last visit.
"If the intelligence is all correct, it seems the enemy has all five attribute releases of Wind, Lightning, Earth, Fire, and Water. Isn't this Kakuzu?" On the way back, she was still analyzing in her mind.
But if those pieces of intelligence had half the credibility, one would burn high incense. So whether the other person was Kakuzu or not was still an unknown.
—Even exactly how many Akatsuki people came was hard to say.
The girl recalled the impression Kakuzu left at the bottom of her heart.
"This guy Kakuzu, like Sasori, is also a perverted figure interested in other people's corpses..." The girl curled her lip and said disdainfully. If Sasori's gaze was only gloomy and dangerous, Kakuzu's gaze gave people a more greasy and greedy feeling of disgust.
"Speaking of which... Deidara's corpse was probably also recovered by them."
Before long, she had passed through the waterfall, left the core area of Mist Ninja, and returned to the small courtyard.
When opening the door, she was still talking to herself: "Wonder if Deidara ended up as Sasori's or Kakuzu's collection..." The two boys in the team happened to walk out of the bathroom, eyes hazy, bare-chested, revealing chests that were either slender or solid, bath towels wrapped around their waists, dripping wet, looking steaming hot.
"Hn...?"
Haruno Sakura's action of taking off her shoes froze in place.
She was stunned for a moment, subconsciously reached out to rub her chin, her weird gaze wandering back and forth between the two boys.
"You guys... just finished taking a bath?" The girl smiled with hidden meaning.
"Yeah. Sasuke and I just drilled for an afternoon, dead tired." Naruto answered straightforwardly, "Taking a bath after sweating a stinky sweat is so comfortable!"
While Haruno Sakura was following Mei Terumi to treat patients and read documents, they hadn't been idle either. They followed the Mist Ninja to conduct an emergency cooperative combat drill, only returning after drilling until the sun went down.
However, that wasn't what Sakura wanted to ask.
"There's a large bathhouse here, three or four people soaking together won't be crowded." Sasuke hurriedly explained, "Do you want to come? The water isn't cold yet, I can help you heat it up again. Taking a bath can effectively relieve physical fatigue."
He didn't know why either. He clearly just took a very ordinary bath with Naruto, just like they usually did in the public bathhouse, couldn't be more normal; he clearly understood the teasing look in Haruno Sakura's eyes and her mocking tone, yet still subconsciously explained to her.
"We'll talk about it later." Haruno Sakura smiled, didn't say much more, waved her hand, and said seriously, "Before that, let's talk business first."
She paused, waited for Sasuke and Naruto to adjust their expressions, and then continued.
"Hurry up and rest tonight. This might be the last comfortable recuperation in the next few days! The subsequent mission will become long, arduous, and full of danger..."
The girl looked solemn and said in a deep voice.
"You guys need to be mentally prepared!"
Naruto clenched his fists, his expression solemn, and smiled faintly: "Rest assured, Sakura... I can't wait to meet the challenge!"
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